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<title>Beldr Dreams of Power and Crabs by vaporwaveandvirginia</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23902444">Beldr Dreams of Power and Crabs</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaporwaveandvirginia/pseuds/vaporwaveandvirginia'>vaporwaveandvirginia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dungeons &amp; Dragons - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dungeons &amp; Dragons 5th Edition, Fantasy, Gen, Horror, Original Character(s), Original Fiction</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:47:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>464</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23902444</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaporwaveandvirginia/pseuds/vaporwaveandvirginia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A short story following a climatic final clash with Izek Strazni from the Curse of Strahd module. Beldr finds a brief moment of reprise to sleep and to dream - his lover and his god appear before him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Beldr Dreams of Power and Crabs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>That night sleep had come easily to the elf. Not the spasmodic trance Beldr was accustomed to, but the rumble and swell of a true sleep bookended by yawns and snores. Never one for superstition, Beldr would have been reluctant to admit he had certainly felt something of a chemical balancing after the events that transpired these past two days. Like having your innards spread neatly across scales he supposed grimly, between the last few flickerings of his eyelids.</p>
<p>After all, that night on roof of the ravens’ manor he had made his first contact. Not that the being had never communicated with him before, but it was the first time he had initiated such a conference. He would have to thank Sam in some quiet, roundabout manner; inspired by the way he seemed to commune so readily with his god, or whatever it was possessing that damned amulet of his.</p>
<p>Beldr recalled the fear, eyes locked with the pristine obsidian figure that ended in a wall of beating limbs and flesh; and the power that fear assured. The promises it whispered and the subtle methods it forbade. The ones that Beldr had been so assured of he felt as though it were his own veins being denied blood.</p>
<p>The fear never seemed to fade completely, only soften and recede like some deafened hermit crab. Though it would change shells every so often; fear, power, fear, hunger - an indecisive little crab it was.</p>
<p>Thoughts of crabs and crawling wet things drew his mind to that black pool where he had first embraced the Hollow God some half-year ago, ringed with toadstools and swallowed by caverns; and then to the yelping boots of that bastard Izek, tearing through the nightscape. He had been too much a man the first time, no number of demons’ claws could hide the obsession and pride that came from having someone to live for. The second death had put Beldr’s heart at ease. Alcinea would have laughed at him, at the circular absurdity of his moral justifications – and he would hold on to this imagined memory.</p>
<p>She took up his dreams like a thundercloud, ballooning and swelling with her dress in the wind. He reached out to her and lightning stretched down his palms, his body ripped up in lashes and nerves flaring.</p>
<p>He woke on a shore like a dying coal. Naked, his charred body lapped up the water like a salve. Hoisting himself up, Beldr stared across the mossy tides with a familiarity , each ripple was one of her eyes – pupils spilling between green irises like a yolk. A blonde hermit crab had rolled to shore in this time, making it partway along one of his blackened feet before Beldr glanced downwards.</p>
<p>This time the crab wore power.</p>
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